Erik Jekabson Trio featuring Dave MacNab and John Wiitala
Erik Jekabson is a freelance trumpet player, composer, arranger and educator who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is equally busy playing and composing for different bands, leading his own groups, (the Erik Jekabson Sextet, the String-tet and the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra) teaching a wide variety of students and running the Young Musicians Program at the California Jazz Conservatory.
Erik has eight CDs out under his own name: his most recent album is “One Note at a Time” (2020) on the Wide Hive label. His other CDs are: “Erik Jekabson Sextet” (2018) and “Erik Jekabson Quintet” on the Wide Hive label, “A Brand New Take” (2016) on the OA2 record label, and “Erik Jekabson Quartet & John Santos: Live at the Hillside Club”, (2014) ,“Anti-Mass”(2012) , and “Crescent Boulevard” (2010) which are on his own Jekab’s Music record label. His debut CD, “Intersection”, was recorded in New York in 2002 and released on the Fresh Sound/New Talent label.
Erik has also co-produced and played on five other recordings which are widely available: The Electric Squeezebox Orchestra’s “Matter Is” (2019, DoubleOone Records) “The Falling Dream” (2018) and “Cheap Rent” (2015)(OA2 Records), “Vista: the Arrival” (2000) and “New World Funk Ensemble”(1998, Turnipseed Music). He’s recorded as a sideman on numerous other jazz recordings, as well as doing session work in many other genres of music and on movie and video game soundtracks.
He’s spent time on the road with Illinois Jacquet, John Mayer, Galactic, and the Howard Fishman Quartet, and has performed at such notable venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Algonquin Room, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Madison Square Garden, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman.
As an arranger and composer, he’s arranged for both vocalists (Madeleine Peyroux, Ani DiFranco, Jane Krakowski, Jackie Ryan, Kenny Washington, Madeline Eastman, Kellye Gray, Sandy Cressman, Raz Kennedy, Rachel Efron) and instrumental ensembles. (San Francisco Symphony, Utah Symphony, Stanford Jazz Orchestra, Realistic Orchestra, California State University East Bay Jazz Ensemble, SF Composers Orchestra and his own Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, which plays every Sunday at the California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley.)
Erik currently leads his own ensembles in the Bay Area, and has brought them to the Stanford Jazz Workshop, the DeYoung Museum, the SFJazz Center, Kuumbwa Jazz, Cafe Stritch, the California Jazz Conservatory, the San Jose Jazz Summerfest, Palo Alto Jazz Alliance, the Napa Valley Jazz Society’s Parlor Series, Jazz at Pearl’s, The Sound Room, Pacifica Performances, the Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival, the Red Poppy Art House, the Piedmont Piano Company and Old First Church Concerts. He also works with local Bay Area musicians such as the Fred Randolph Quintet, Mario Guarneri’s tbd, the Michael O’Neill Quintet featuring Tony Lindsay and Manny Moka and the Band on Fire.
Erik holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and a Master’s Degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and is currently the director of the Young Musician’s Program at the Jazzschool, and serves on the board of Jazz in the Neighborhood. He is on the faculty at the California Jazz Conservatory, Los Medanos College and Diablo Valley College, and has given clinics at Santa Rosa Junior College, Cal State East Bay and Loyola College in New Orleans.
He’s a regular instructor at Jazzcamp West, the Stanford Jazz Workshop, the Lafayette Summer Jazz Workshop and the Brubeck Institute, and has written two books of jazz duets for trumpet.